Thursday, 10 February 2011

Kafka's shame, then, is no more personal than the life and thought which govern it and which he has described thus: "He does not live for the sake of his own life, he does not think for the sake of his own thought. He feels as though he were living and thinking under the constraint of a family. . . . Because of this unknown family . . . he cannot be released." We do not know the make-up of this unknown family, which is composed of human beings and animals. But this much is clear: it is this family that forces Kafka to move cosmic ages in his writings. Doing this family's bidding, he moves the mass of historical happenings as Sisyphus rolled the stone. As he does so, its nether side comes to light; it is not a pleasant sight, but Kafka is capable of bearing it. "To believe in progress is not to believe that progress has taken place. That would be no belief." Kafka did not consider the age in which he lived as an advance over the beginnings of time. His novels are set in a swamp world. In his works, created things appear at the stage which Bachofen has termed the hetairic stage. The fact that it is now forgotten does not mean that it does not extend into the present. On the contrary, it is actual by virtue of this very oblivion.

Borg-Warner ad: Life, 8 April 1957 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Walter Benjamin: excerpt from Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of his Death, from Jüdische Rundschau, 1934, translated by Harry Zohn in Illuminations, 1968

12 comments:

when I graduated high-school 1959 I went to Montgomery Junior College in their Electrical Technology program which was a left-over program of Bliss Electrical School which was connected with the Navy Dept Main Navydown on Constitution Ave just the other side of the Washington Monument those WW2wo "temporary"

white buildings...

anyway in 1960 or 61 I got a job operating computers 1401's and a 7070

and DIG THIS Hyman Rickover was the boss above my big boss Rickover's office was nest floor up over the computer room..

when I switched over to the night shift...so that I could go to Liberal Arts School (U of Md) so's I could

"learn something" ....Real" I used to very frequently run into The Admiral ..

he used to come in to the computer room and shout at me whenever he came in at night:

American mythology is so strange, there was Neptune, Poseidon, Triton, Rickover, Nimitz and Nautilus among the sea gods, just to start with.

This gilt salt cellar from Paris (1527), wrought from a nautilus shell, will, perhaps ironically, have already outlasted, in terms of sheer mechanical longevity, every computer that was in operation in 1960.

McArthur might have been president INSTEAD of that fu'ki'g Eisenhower-Nixon "team"boy, we sure were lucky we didn't get Military Morons to drive the buss! Not like the Peaceful Bliss we are knee-deep into today.

at leas we didn't have to bomb-the-shit out of Egypt to get rid our "ally" Moobearick... like we did in Iraq and all the other etcs

I guess since we invented that nuclear-bomb delivery system what's it called ? OH YEAH: The Peace Keeper

well, we sure know how to differentiate...

and tonight Muberick is gonna "step down"

gee I wonder how much we added to his $80 Billion dollar ...... stash? Maybe 200,000 tax-free shares of General Motors or Chrysler? or Bowing? or Slumberjay! or Blackhawk (who changed their name but are still doing their stealth/covert government sanctioned bull-shit

heck all of this could drive me nutsif it wasn't for my already absoluteall encompassing insanity I wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in Gaza!

literacy in different cultures Edand about what stares you in theface is what Olson is about...seedid you ever go to Glouster...didyou go with Ken Irby...who spent alife in geographical poetry...andcloser to this home...Allegory ofa Poet by Tom Clark...or watch upclose "The figure of outward" Robert Creeley

Hi Tom ! Sir Colin here - your man in Paris. I disapperaed into the city of lights a decade ago ... found your book on kerouac in a little bookstore next to the Pompidou center. bought it. read it. Damn ! It's enough to make you NOT wnat to be a writer ! Too late for me and you i guess ... would love to re-kindle our correspond dance if you would. Here's my e-mail : maharcolin@hotmail.com. Drop me a line. Best to Angelica.c

Great hear from you, Colin. If I had an e-mail address of my own, honest engine, I'd send it to you. Perhaps the Higher Powers, in their infinite wisdom, have once again proved their great sagesse by limiting my correspon-dancing to these little boxes. Where, it should go without saying, you would and will be welcome and I will respond every and any time. Well, make that, any time I'm functional. Right now we are neck-deep in swamp world, house and health deteriorating apace, so at least there is a sort of equality. I cherish sweet memories of a night when your playing and singing convinced me of the immortality of your genius. The fact that it is now forgotten does not mean that it does not extend into the present. So do your confidantes now call you Wolfie?